1804-1864

The Romancer and The Realist

HawthorneHawthorne was born on the Fourth of July in

1804.He is the descendant of Puritan parents.His father died at sea in 1808 (he was a ship

captain).Hawthorne group with his mother and her family

in Maine, near Raymond lake.He struggled later with working because it cut in

to his interests in writing.Hawthorn graduated from Bowdoin College in

1825.

HawthorneHawthorne rejected traditional careers like

medicine and law because he disliked institutionalized authority.

He also didn’t really believe in religion, only a beneficent deity.

He wanted to write at a time when there was little, if any money in it as a profession.

Hawthorne believed in faculty psychology, where one has control of their will in daytime, but not in dreams.

HawthorneHawthorne obtained little work or success, so

wrote children’s books and edited.He broke out after 12 years with Twice Told

Tales.This collected contained “The Minister’s Black

Veil” and “Young Goodman Brown,” two of his more famous short stories.

In 1839, he became engaged to Sophia Peabody. He then took a political appointment to supplement his income.

He left after a year because it stifled his writing.

HawthorneAfter leaving, he joined a Utopian commune. He

thought it would be great for his writing and marriage, but it turns out farming wasn’t for him either. (This is dramatized in the hilarious The Blithedale Romance)

For the next number of years Hawthorne started hanging out with Emerson, Thoreau, and others.

During this time he published 20 works.Hawthorne’s daughter, Una, was born in 1844, and

thus, Hawthorne went back to politics.After dismissal from this job, Hawthorne wrote The

Scarlet Letter, more out of frustration than anything.

HawthorneThe Scarlet Letter was his fist novel and his only

“masterpiece”.Hawthorne ended up with 3 children in total, and

lived in Concord, Liverpool, Rome, and many other places.

Hawthorne returned to the states in 1860, but his health failed and he became more jaded as a result of the impending Civil War.

He opposed slavery, but did little in the way of reform.

He died in 1864, the year before slavery was abolished.